


Office Hours

by sea_level



Series: Extended AUgust [2]
Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Professors, And They Were Officemates!, Both of them..., Community College, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious, POV Third Person, Swearing, oh my god they were officemates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25048378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sea_level/pseuds/sea_level
Summary: “200 words!” Jay exclaims, leaning back in his reclining chair and sighing loudly. “That’s all that I ask of them! 200 words a week and two responses! How hard can it be!” He leans forward and buries his face in his hands, fake-sobbing loudly.“Jay, we work at a community college,” Nick says, digging through yet another short story that’s basically just an extended metaphor on why technology is evil. “You passed up a university job for this. You knew ahead of time that at least a quarter of the student body gives up about halfway through the semester. You can’t complain.”“I can,” Jay says, lowering his hands to fix Nick with a determined stare, “and I will.”10/22/2020: Did some flow edits and messed around a bit with the ending to make it better. Plot's still the same.
Relationships: Jordan Baker/Daisy Buchanan (implied), Nick Carraway/Jay Gatsby
Series: Extended AUgust [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811098
Comments: 12
Kudos: 128
Collections: AUgust 2020





	Office Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Rating for language.
> 
> Jordan's pronouns, used once, for the purposes of this story are they/them.
> 
> This au developed in the Discord, though I used it as inspiration here because I can't help but feel like I was pushing my ideas in everyone's faces lmao. And why redevelop something that's just objectively perfect lol

“200 words!” Jay exclaims, leaning back in his reclining chair and sighing loudly. “That’s all that I ask of them! 200 words a week and two responses! How hard can it be!” He leans forward and buries his face in his hands, fake-sobbing loudly.

“Jay, we work at a community college,” Nick says, digging through yet another short story that’s basically just an extended metaphor on why technology is evil. “You passed up a university job for this. You knew ahead of time that at least a quarter of the student body gives up about halfway through the semester. You can’t complain.”

“I can,” Jay says, lowering his hands to fix Nick with a determined stare, “and I will.”

Nick grumbles and swivels back around, filling out the rubric in his messiest handwriting just to make himself feel a little better about the whole thing. The technical aspects of the student’s prose were solid, even if the subject was overdone to death and the conclusion was wrong, at least in Nick's subjective opinion. He couldn’t, in good conscience, mark them down for that, but it wouldn’t stop him from leaving a few extra comments.

He staples the rubric to the page, slaps the paper down onto the finished pile, and picks up the next one. He squints at it and then squints some more. The words are there, alright, but together they're almost completely incomprehensible. This student either hadn’t proofread their work, or they'd never been given a proper grammatical education. Sadly enough, the latter was the case far too often, and, realistically, there was very little he could do about it. He was a creative writing professor. Teaching students grammar wasn’t in his job description.

“You want to grade this one?” Nick asks, raising the paper and waving it in Jay’s direction.

“Only if you hire me as your TA,” Jay says. Nick can hear the grin in his voice.

“Only if you stop teaching ten classes. You work too much,” Nick replies. Despite this, Jay’s chair creaks as he stands up, and, when he leans over Nick's shoulder to look at the paper, Nick gets a nice lungful of his scent. Nick closes his eyes and takes a deep breath to calm himself over their proximity. _Big mistake._ Now Jay’s the only thing he can smell.

 _He’s unattainable._ Nick repeats his silent mantra, willing his heart to slow. _He’s unattainable. He’s unattainable._

“Wow,” Jay says, pulling Nick out of his little meditation, “you’re right, this is pretty bad.”

“I never said it was bad,” Nick protests.

Jay turns to him and grins. They’re far too close, but it would be suspicious if Nick leaned away now. “You only ask me to grade the bad ones.”

“I’m sure there’s a good story under there somewhere,” Nick defends. “I just don’t want to go through the headache of reading it.”

“Let me handle it,” Jay says, plucking the paper off of Nick’s desk.

“Jay!” Nick protests.

“Nick,” Jay says and presents Nick with his best puppy dog eyes. Nick is sure that Jay knows they're his biggest weakness. They're a one-hit fatality every time.

“Fine,” Nick whines, swiveling back around.

“Really? I expected more of a fight,” Jay replies. His scanner whirs to life a second later.

Five minutes later, Nick gets an email from Jay, no subject, no body, just a single attachment—the student’s story but without all the glaring errors.

“Here you go,” Jay says, materializing at Nick’s side. He hands him back the original paper, now covered all over in red ink.

“I think I might cry,” Nick says, looking up at him. “How do you do it?”

“That’s a secret,” Jay says with a grin. The leather of his chair squeaks as he plops back down onto it.

“Seriously, you’re a lifesaver, Jay,” Nick says. “You gotta tell me. Why the _hell_ are you here? With your skills, you could have your pick of jobs, and yet you’re _here_ teaching ten entire online classes at a community college. _Why?_ ”

Something sparkles in Jay’s eyes and he grins mischievously as he starts to speak. “Well, as you might know, your dear cousin Daisy, the light of my life, teaches a few Public Speaking classes which, as you also know, are in the Communications department.”

Nick groans. “Not this story again! Seriously! Tell me the real one!”

“And, as you know well by now, all of my classes are in the English department,” Jay continues, ignoring Nick’s pain, “and I do quite terribly in front of an audience. That's why I teach online classes and why I can't teach a traditional Communications course. But! If I can pick up and convert a few Communications classes, say, for example, Essentials of Argumentation or, like, Intro to Mass Communications, to online classes, then I’d have a reason to talk to her more.”

“Jay, her office is literally right there.” Nick points out the window and across the small grassy common to the Communications offices. “You’re allowed to visit.”

“Ah, but it would be awkward,” Jay says, waving off Nick’s perfectly valid solution to his convoluted and obviously fake problem.

“One day,” Nick vows, “I’ll figure out why really you put yourself through this hell. Ten classes. My god.”

“That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.”

“Jay, you can’t honestly think that I believe a word of that bull.”

“Well,” Jay says, staring at Nick and looking almost wistful, “it makes a good story, doesn’t it?”

Nick can’t argue with that. He’d write it himself if it was anything but the life that Jay was actively living.

* * *

“Jay,” Daisy says, “your attempts to seduce Nick will continue to fail if you keep telling him you’re in love with me! Why can’t you see this!”

“I know, I know,” Jay whines, “but then he’ll say something and my brain will be all ‘abort mission’, and I’ll mess it up all over again.”

Daisy sighs and pats him on the back. “I only say this because I love you like a brother and because you helped me divorce Tom, but you need to get a fucking grip on yourself, Jesus Fucking Christ, man!”

Jay makes a sad sound and plops down onto the visitor chair. “He’s just— He’s him! He’s perfect, and I want to impress him and be mysterious! And if he knows I like him like, y’know, _that_ , he won't see me like that and then I won’t have any leverage anymore!”

“I would facepalm if I wasn’t wearing a full face of makeup right now,” Daisy says, deadpan. “Look, I already pulled strings so that the two of you can share the same office space. There’s not a lot more that I can do to help you out. This one’s on you. That, and I don’t want to keep lying to Nick about not knowing you!”

Jay stares at a blank spot on Daisy’s desk for perhaps a little too long, his furrowed eyebrows a clear indicator that the gears are turning in his head. Daisy can practically see the lightbulb when his head pops up, and he looks at Daisy with a brilliant smile on his face.

“I’ve got it! I’ve just got to be more cool, mysterious, and sexy!” Jay exclaims, clambering out of the seat so he can put whatever harebrained scheme he’s come up with into action. “Thanks, Daisy!”

“Jay! Jay, no!” Daisy calls after him, but it’s too late. The door’s already swinging shut, and she can hear that his footsteps are already too far down the hall for him to hear her.

Sighing again, Daisy starts to shuffle her papers around so she can put them away when office hours end. There are better things to think about than Jay’s love woes. Jordan from the Psych department will be coming over later to drive her home, and Daisy's never been happier about the fact that she never learned how to drive. If Daisy’s itching to see their cute face again, it’s not like Daisy’s not allowed to have love woes of her own.

* * *

“You know,” Nick says, “I thought you were crazy for having office hours for six hours a day when we first met, but now I _know_ that’s the case.”

“My students could arrive at any time,” Jay says. “It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

“Jay, in the two years we’ve been sharing this office, I have seen precisely _one_ student come in for you,” Nick argues. “You could do all this work from home. They’re _online classes_! Your students can just email you!”

“I like to think that that one person who showed really proves how important it is for me to be available in person,” Jay says. It's not like he can just say that he only sticks around to be near Nick. That would _really_ be pathetic.

Nick shakes his head, and in a lower, quieter tone of voice, he says, “I really shouldn’t question it, Jay, all the weird things you do that make your life harder. I just can’t understand it. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”

Jay thinks it makes perfect sense if you simply factor in that he's in love with him. Not that Nick needs to know that.

Jay's done a lot of things simply for that reason before. Hell, he couldn’t even code to save his life when he and Nick met three years ago at one of Daisy’s fashion shows. Jay remembers it well, the moment when his infatuation shifted in full from Daisy to Nick in just a few short hours. Nick was just so easy to talk to, and the way he talked and the things that he said made Jay feel _seen_ for the first time in his entire life. Nick would probably never understand how much he’d helped Jay mentally and emotionally just by being himself, so when Nick complained about grading, Jay found himself looking for ways to automate whatever annoying little processes he could in an attempt to pay him back.

Learning to code also helped him set up his online classes which made it easier for him to spend time with Nick, so really, it was a win-win situation for everyone involved.

“Well,” Nick says with a shrug, “the department head _really_ likes you, so I guess I can’t complain.”

“Besides,” Jay adds, “we get to see more of each other.”

Nick looks at him curiously and then his eyes flick down just for the barest hint of a second to Jay’s chest, to the extra button that Jay had very purposefully decided to leave undone before he’d walked into their shared office that morning. "Yeah, that's true," he says, a little distractedly.

Jay smiles.

_Bingo._

* * *

Nick walks into his morning class two minutes late.

He’s usually a little more punctual, but the line at the coffee cart was longer than usual, and he couldn't imagine trying to teach this class without being mildly caffeinated.

It's why it makes perfect sense that Nick doesn't notice Jay is sitting in the back of his class until he's already five minutes into explaining what the day's activity is going to be. He finishes up quickly, claps his hands together, and says, “Alright, everyone, get out your timers. Yes, I do mean your phones. Let’s get started!”

With everyone suitably distracted with scribbling, typing, and chatting, Nick makes his way to the back of the room.

“Sure you’re not in anyone’s seat?” Nick asks humorously when he reaches Jay.

“Nah,” Jay says, shaking his head. “I made sure that everyone else sat down first.”

“Courteous,” Nick comments. “Honestly, I’m surprised to see you here. Never thought I’d get to see you in a classroom.”

“Had to see what all the fuss was about,” Jay says.

Nick can’t help but laugh. “What fuss? Between the two of us, you’re the minor celebrity. Engaging. Enigmatic. ‘Makes online classes _fun_.’”

“I’ll have you know you have good RateMyProfessor reviews, too.” Jay reaches up, probably to pat Nick on the shoulder, but Nick shifts slightly and he misses, hand landing squarely on the back of Nick’s neck. The slight force of the pat pulls Nick down slightly and lessens the space between them.

Nick makes a high pitched noise of surprise and then tries his best not to look entirely mortified by it. Judging by the soft smile on Jay’s face, he’s failed miserably. At least the students didn't notice.

Nick clears his throat and steps away. “Sorry,” he says.

“Don’t apologize,” Jay says.

“Alright,” Nick says. “Alright. Hey, want to come up and say something? Reveal your secret identity and teach these students a thing or two about the English language?”

“I think I’ll stay back here,” Jay says. “I’d like to keep the air of mystery.”

Nick can’t help but grin. What a Jay thing to say.

* * *

“I think it’s working,” Jay says.

“What?” Daisy asks. “What’s working?”

“My plan,” Jay explains. “To seduce Nick.”

Daisy stares at him, hoping that her search will yield absolutely anything other than complete sincerity. It doesn’t.

“You are, without a doubt, the densest man I’ve ever met.”

“What? Why?”

“He’s in love with you, you fuck!” Daisy exclaims.

Jay frowns. “No, he isn’t. How would you even know that?”

“He’s my _cousin!_ We _talk!_ ”

Jay opens his mouth to say something but then closes it. Opens it again. Nothing comes out.

“Wait, really?” he manages. “I don't— What— Daisy! You could have told me this earlier!

"I didn't tell you because it wasn't my secret to tell, but I'm so _tired_ of you two just dancing around each other!" Daisy says.

"What am I supposed to do now?” Jay whines. "I didn't plan for this."

“I don’t know! Ask him out. Offer to drive him home. Dealer’s choice!” That last one had worked well enough for Jordan and her. “Haven’t you ever been in a relationship with anyone before?”

Jay lifts a finger up. One relationship. Okay, she can work with that.

The finger turns to point at her. Ah.

“Okay,” Daisy amends. “I take that last part back. But still, take him somewhere. You like to impress him, right? Now’s your chance.”

* * *

“You were right,” Jay says.

“What?” Nick asks and then swallows the mouthful of food he’d been chewing. The place they’re dining at is fancy enough that when he’d looked at the menu, he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Jay had ended up ordering for him, but whatever it was that he was eating, it sure tasted good enough.

“About why I’m at the college,” Jay explains. “I’m not there for Daisy.”

“I knew it!” Nick says, feeling validated now that years of his skepticism have paid off.

“In fact, I actually already know Daisy. We had a thing in our twenties, and reunited during The Show, you know the one"—Nick nods—"and we decided to become friends.”

“You, Jay Gatsby, have betrayed me,” Nick says, pointing his fork at Jay unemphatically. He’s a little distracted by how good the food is. “Wait, but then, why are you here? And by here I mean the college.”

“I met someone else.”

Ah. So maybe the Daisy story wasn’t completely off the mark.

“Who?” Nick asks, his curiosity always overruling his self-preservation.

Jay smiles his center-of-the-universe smile and says, “You.”

"Ha," Nick says. "Very funny. Come on, tell me who it is."

"I'm being serious!" Jay argues. "Remember when we met? Just talking with you was all I needed to know that you were it for me!"

“I’m not sure I’m that intellectually stimulating,” Nick jokes.

“Oh, not just intellectually,” Jay says, his grin becoming sharper as he stares at Nick, his gaze completely unwavering.

Nick swallows on air. As often as it happens, he's still not used to the full force of Jay's attention.

“Yeah?” he asks, but it comes out more like a croak.

“Yeah,” Jay says, his voice softening again, and, just like that, his beautiful, beautiful, normal smile is back.

He looks, for all the world, like he's exactly as interested as he claims to be, maybe even a little bit in love, and isn't that one hell of a revelation.

The part of his brain that he's training to tell himself that Jay's unattainable rises up again, but this time Nick quashes it. It's not hard, not with Jay looking at him like _that._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm...one step up from being completely unconscious, so I haven't given this a proper proofing. Feel free to yell my grammatical and word misuse mistakes at me in the comments. (edit: as of 10/22/2020, i have proofread, but the invitation still stands!)
> 
> I went to an online prof's office precisely once. They shared the room with my in-person C++ professor. The experience was, I imagine, quite a bit different from the person that visited Jay in this fic. I had to dispute the test key after literally every test because it was wrong. :^)
> 
> Not enough community college professor aus, speaking as someone who went to one. Rectify this, I must. I've got no experience with professors or academia, but my time at community college was just really fascinating cause I got to see and meet and learn from people from all sorts of different backgrounds and walks of life, and I loved how...un-uniform it all was. 100% worth it. i did, however, attend one of the Large ones so like it's all unique. /end me gushing over how much I love community college lmao


End file.
